For a rock & roller from the 1950s the last part of the 60s was a musical desert, a psychedelic neverland of hippie peace and love. Dominated by legions of posing middle class pseudo revolutionary students wearing flares, bulbous shoes, multi coloured shirts and big hair the skies were crowded with rainbows, unicorns and the droning white noise that thankfully smothered the endless nasal strangulation of totally meaningless lyrics.

Then, at the very end of the decade I struggled across yet another dry, windswept dune and came across……an oasis…and what made it even better that, with such a hippie name and look all the poseurs expected the usual flower power drivel.

What they got was pure unadulterated southern rock….heresy for them but a return to the promised land for me…..

When rock n’roll first hit Britain in the mid 50s it was a purely American phenomenon. We bought the records and argued Presley v Haley in the school corridors but, in general, the media ignored it and the BBC put it on ration.

We could just about tune in to Radio Luxembourg and AFN and hear the latest hits through fades and whistles but that was it.
British record companies tried to market home grown rock n’rollers but they were pale imitations of the US originals and their bands were often made up of older session men who despised the genre.

However in late 1955 Rock Island Line, a skiffle song by the British jazz musician/singer Lonnie Donegan became a massive UK hit without any marketing hype. For a year or two Donegan and other UK skifflers cashed in on the novelty but the true significance of the trend could only be seen at a deeper level.

the main impact of skiffle was as a grassroots amateur movement, particularly popular among working class males, who could cheaply buy, improvise or build their own instruments and who have been seen as reacting against the drab austerity of post-war Britain.

Soon many of these youngsters developed into competent self taught guitarists. They became tired of skiffle’s formulaic structure and saved up to buy electric guitars and extended their repertoire to include covers of American rock n’roll. By the early 60s there was a thriving UK locally based band scene.

At the same time in the wake of the payola scandals in the late 50s the US record companies began pushing teen idols like Frankie Avalon and Fabian who presented a less rebellious, cleaner and more romantic image. The consequence was, when American teenagers tastes began to shift back towards a rawer rougher edged sound British groups like the Beatles and Rolling Stones spearheaded the British invasion, often sounding more authentic than equivalent American bands.

For true grit, however, nothing has ever beaten Eric Burdon and the Animals “House of the Rising Sun” Their version of this old American folk song, recorded in May 1964 hit the top of the US charts in September of that year and it remains a rock classic to this day.

I don’t care what anybody else says only someone like me, born in 1940 and hitting the most awkward and irritating period of youth between 1954 and 1958 at exactly the same time as the world of music was ripped asunder can truly describe himself as a child of rock and roll.

Recorded in February 1956 in New Orleans and backed by some of the best session men in the city Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally was released one month later.

Richard had been irritated by the pop chart success of Pat Boone’s cover of his 1955 rhythm and blues hit Tutti Frutti so he decided to record a song that would be too fast for Boone to cover.

The result was a sax laden raw, driving 12 bar blues that stayed at the top of the r&b charts for 19 weeks but also broke into the top ten pop chart briefly making Richard, with his wild boogie woogie piano and loud screaming voice one of the hottest names in the exploding genre of rock and roll.

By the end of the fifties Richard and many of the other early rockers faded into the background as the big labels in the US tried to push a less brash, more commercial style towards the teenage market. But by then Richard had left rock and roll behind to become a preacher.

He remained popular in England, however, so when he returned to rock in the early 60s he made several UK tours playing with, amongst others, the then little known Beatles and Rolling Stones. Interestingly enough the Beatles made one of the best covers of Long Tall Sally. Slightly slower and less frantic they nevertheless managed a decent fist of his raw, untutored style – not surprising, really, since he had coached Lennon when they had shared several gigs in Hamburg in 1962 when the Fab 4 were totally unknown.

Interesting factoid
Little Richard (real name Richard Penniman ) has had a roller coaster life with many high and low points. But at the end of the 60s, at the height of the influence of Black Power he defied their demands that he perform only to black audiences – fifteen years after he had caused consternation in many southern towns by attracting white kids to his concerts.

Remember this?

Am I out of sync with this 21st century world when I say the words of that beautiful song still send shivers up and down my spine. In this world of “relationships” rather than marriages, of “partners” instead of husbands/wives, is the sentiment behind it a curious relic of a bygone age?

I wonder.

We live in a society where certain political and commercial cartels appear to have an interest in engulfing our cultural antennae with a constantly recurring tsunami of sexuality until every taboo has been swept aside. So, is there room for that notion of romance – the sheer unbounding sense of exhilaration when a man or a woman wants to be by your side and where sex is merely one manifestation of that sweet surrender of oneself to another?

For many years western popular music proved a reliable and universally acceptable vehicle for expressing the magic of that moment, either via gentle, light hearted joy

…or with the the bittersweet emotion of parting

Sometimes we wanted to broadcast to the whole of mankind that we were together by going anywhere and everywhere arm in arm

On the other hand it could be a more wistful almost ethereal dreamscape where the rest of the world scarcely mattered

Romance could sometimes be a roller coaster of emotion marked by a deep sense of yearning when your other half was elsewhere and all you had was emptiness

A cascade of words could splash the canvas of love with shimmering, vibrant colours of devotion

But a love could also be so deep that being together in itself was sufficient and no words were needed

So do songs like these have no resonance with young (or even old) people today?

I would wager that they do but as a modern music of the underground, the new cultural samizdat, publicly disowned but privately treasured…

…and these words, easily mocked by a corrupt and cynical media, must surely still strike a chord across a million crowded rooms…

Once you have found her,
Never let her go.
Once you have found her,
Never let her go!